PM’s awards celebrate literary excellence

The 2025 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards offer lucrative prizes to the winners, and since they were initiated by the federal government nearly a decade ago, have celebrated authors across diverse genres, career experience, and subjects.

Both the winners and the shortlisted authors share in a tax-free prize pool of $600,000, making it the richest literary prize in Australia. Each shortlisted entry received $5,000 with the winner of each category receiving $80,000.

The shortlisted authors encompassed emerging and established Australian writers, illustrators, poets, and historians.  This year saw nationally and internationally renowned names like Tim Winton and Michelle de Kretser alongside lesser-recognised names like poets Kylie Gatjawarrawuy Mununggurr and Dave Petzold.

Delivery of the awards is now the responsibility of the new Writing Australia, under the umbrella of Creative Australia, following the release of the Australian Government’s 2023 National Cultural Policy, Revive: a place for every story, a story for every place.

In a statement, the director of Writing Australia Wenona Byrne said, “These awards celebrate the highest expression of literary excellence, and we warmly congratulate the shortlisted authors and illustrators on this recognition of their outstanding work.

“This year marks the first delivery of the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards under Writing Australia. The Awards are a key part of our commitment to supporting the literature sector, and we are proud to celebrate these works as part of a new era in Australian writing.”

Across six categories, the awards have whittled down five finalists for fiction, non-fiction, young adult literature, children’s literature, poetry, and Australian history.

Michelle de Kretser had received high praise for her winning novel, “Theory & Practice”. In November last year, The Guardian described it as “A form-melding book contending with colonialism, the disharmony that can arise between our purported ideals and how we live, the depths of jealousy and shame.”

Rick Morton’s winner for non-fiction, “Mean Streak”, also mined the depths of shame in retelling the horrific robodebt scheme and its immediate and longer-term impacts on those the government targeted for so-called debts, and the government, media, and legal professionals who were punished for breaking the silence on the scheme.

The winning titles included Geraldine Fela’s “Critical Care: Nurses on the frontline of Australia’s AIDS crisis”, “The Other Side of Daylight: New and Selected Poems” by David Brooks, “Leo and Ralph” by Peter Carnavas, and “The Invocations” by Krystal Sutherland.

Winning is obviously a financial boon, and priceless publicity, but the shortlisted authors also relish the publicity their book receives, and the knowledge that their title was chosen from nearly 700 entries.

Palestinian author, playwright and scholar Dr Samah Sabawi was shortlisted in the non-fiction category for her highly-praised book Cactus Pear for My Beloved.

She tells LSJ Online, “I wish my father was still alive to celebrate. He brought us to Australia 45 years ago, a family of stateless Palestinian refugees. He taught us to stand tall despite the anti-Palestinian racism we experienced in an Australian education system that erased Palestine and the Palestinian people, and a daily stream of media broadcasts that vilified us.

“To be shortlisted for the PM literary award feels like an affirmation to the Palestinian refugee child in me to persevere. To keep on telling our stories. To remind the world that where we come from, Gaza, was a beautiful vibrant city with an educated and cultured people and a history that stretches back four thousand years. During the millennials, it witnessed the rise and fall of civilizations and the repeated cycles of destruction followed by revival and despair conquered by hope. This is what keeps me going in the shadow of the genocide in Gaza.”

Ultimately, she reflects, “This award honours my father’s memory and shines a light on Gaza, carrying our family’s story to more hearts—reminding us that from despair, hope can and will rise again.”

Expert judging panels have carefully considered entries for the awards to select the final shortlists, and the winners are bolded below:

Fiction

• Always Will Be: Stories of Goori sovereignty from the futures of the Tweed
  by Mykaela Saunders (University of Queensland Press)
• Highway 13 by Fiona McFarlane (Allen & Unwin)
• Juice by Tim Winton (Penguin Random House)
• Rapture by Emily Maguire (Allen & Unwin)
• Theory & Practice by Michelle de Kretser (Text Publishing)

Non-Fiction

• Cactus Pear for My Beloved by Samah Sabawi (Penguin Random House Australia)
• Deep Water by James Bradley (Penguin Random House)
• Fragile Creatures: A Memoir by Khin Myint (Black Inc.)
• Mean Streak by Rick Morton (HarperCollins Publishers)
• The Pulling by Adele Dumont (Scribe Publications)

Australian History

• Australia in 100 Words by Amanda Laugesen (NewSouth Publishing)
• Critical Care: Nurses on the frontline of Australia’s AIDS crisis by Geraldine Fela (NewSouth Publishing)
• Näku Dhäruk The Bark Petitions by Clare Wright (Text Publishing)
• The Wild Reciter: Poetry and Popular Culture in Australia 1890-the Present by Peter Kirkpatrick (Melbourne University Publishing)
• Warra Warra Wai by Darren Rix and Craig Cormick (Scribner Australia, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Australia)

Poetry

• Companions, Ancestors, Inscriptions by Peter Boyle (Vagabond Press)
• Makarra by Barrina South (Recent Work Press)
• rock flight by Hasib Hourani (Giramondo Publishing)
• That Galloping Horse by Petra White (Shearsman Books)
• The Other Side of Daylight: New and Selected Poems by David Brooks (University of Queensland Press)

Children’s Literature

• A Leaf Called Greaf by Kelly Canby (Fremantle Press)
• Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Tooth Fairy (And Some Things You Didn’t) by Briony Stewart (Hachette Australia)
• Leo and Ralph by Peter Carnavas (University of Queensland Press)
• Raymaŋgirrbuy dhäwu When I was a little girl by Kylie Gatjawarrawuy Mununggurr (Magabala Books)
• We Live in a Bus by Dave Petzold (Thames & Hudson Australia)

Young Adult

• Anomaly by Emma Lord (Affirm Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Australia)
• My Family and Other Suspects by Kate Emery (Allen & Unwin)
• The Anti-Racism Kit by Sabina Patawaran and Jinyoung Kim (Hardie Grant Children’s Publishing)
• The Invocations by Krystal Sutherland (Penguin Random House Australia)
• Thunderhead by Sophie Beer (Allen & Unwin)

The winners of the 2025 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards were announced on Monday 29 September at the National Library of Australia in Canberra.

Main image: Michelle de Kretser, author of fiction winning title Theory & Practice (Text Publishing) [photo supplied]